The soccer icon is suing F45 Training, a fitness company co-owned by the actor, claiming it owes him millions of dollars for an endorsement deal.
According to court filings, Beckham entered a five-year agreement in 2020 to be a brand ambassador for F45.
The company said it would pay Beckham $1.5 million per year, the filings said, in addition to shares of the company six months and 12 months after it went public.
It claims F45 failed to make good on the following promises: to transfer nearly 1 million shares to Beckham within the time period outlined, and to issue $5 million worth of additional shares.
Beckham claimed he received the initial shares eight months later than promised—by then, F45’s stock had declined, costing him $9.3 million, he said.
The Inter Miami co-owner sued the fitness chain in May 2023, claiming he is entitled to more than $14 million in damages.
The actor was named F45’s chief brand officer in 2023, and regularly appears as the face of the brand in promotional materials.
A messy history Beckham is not the only former brand ambassador to accuse F45 of not following through on payments.
The soccer legend is suing F45 Training, a fitness business that he and the actor co-own, alleging that the business owes him millions of dollars from an endorsement agreement.
Court documents state that in 2020, Beckham signed a five-year contract to represent F45 as a brand ambassador. As per the filings, the company promised to pay Beckham $1.55 million annually, along with company shares six months and a year after the disclosure.
Even after its IPO in July 2021, Beckham’s management company claimed in court documents that F45 had not given him the promised “substantial cash and equity compensation” for his endorsement. It alleges that F45 breached its commitments to transfer almost a million shares to Beckham within the specified time frame and to issue additional shares valued at $5 million.
Eight months after the promised delivery date, Beckham claimed he had lost $9.3 million in value due to a decline in F45’s stock. In May 2023, the co-owner of Inter Miami filed a lawsuit against the fitness chain, arguing he was entitled to damages exceeding $14 million.
Fox Business reports that in September 2023, a judge rejected F45’s initial request to have the lawsuit dismissed. In court documents, attorneys for F45 refuted Beckham’s claims. The former soccer player, according to the company, had “unclean hands” and disregarded his contractual obligations. “.
From suitable to unsuitable.
According to their website, F45 was first introduced in Australia in 2011 and has since spread to more than 60 countries worldwide. Functional training, circuit training, and high-intensity interval training are all incorporated into F45, an acronym for “functional” exercise lasting 45 minutes.
In 2019, Wahlberg, according to Beckham’s lawsuit, joined the F45 board and purchased a 36% stake in the company through his investment group. The actor frequently appears as the brand’s face in promotional materials after being appointed F45’s chief brand officer in 2023.
But F45’s value fell just as fast: after going public on the New York Stock Exchange in July 2021 at a valuation of $1.44 billion, the company faced a number of problems that Beckham refers to as “fiscal mismanagement and macroeconomic pressures.” The company subsequently disclosed that it had lost $372 million in total in 2021 and 2022.
F45 delisted from the stock market in August 2023 as a result of breaking NYSE regulations by neglecting to timely submit its 2022 financial statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2023, the share price of F45 fell by over ninety percent.
Untidy past.
F45 has been accused of nonpayment by a number of former brand ambassadors, including Beckham.
Together with former world No. 1 Beckham, he first sued F45 in October 2022. Greg Norman, a golfer, claiming breach of contract. Norman did not file a second lawsuit after they were later told by a judge to present their cases independently.
The first professional athlete to sue the fitness company was former NFL wide receiver Terrell Owens in 2017, before Wahlberg got involved with F45. Owens claimed the company owed him $700,000.
According to Owens’s lawsuit, he accepted $15,000 in exchange for appearing in a promotional video and actually got the money. Owens, however, further asserted that F45 had given him a payment guarantee of $25,000 per gym for the first 25 that opened and $5,000 for each subsequent gym opening.
It is unknown what happened to Owens’ lawsuit as of April 2024, but F45 openly refuted the allegations and declared it would countersue Owens.
